Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His
Highest – Monday, 2 December 2013 “Christian Perfection”
Not as though I had already attained,
either were already perfect . . .(Philippians 3:12)
It is a snare to imagine that God wants
to make us perfect specimens of what He can do; God’s purpose is to make us one
with Himself. The emphasis of holiness movements is apt to be that God is
producing specimens of holiness to put in His museum. If you go off on this
idea of personal holiness, the dead-set of your life will not be for God, but
for what you call the manifestation of God in your life. “It can never be God’s
will that I should be sick,” you say. If it was God’s will to bruise His own
Son, why should He not bruise you? The thing that tells for God is not your
relevant consistency to an idea of what a saint should be, but your real vital
relation to Jesus Christ, and your abandonment to Him whether you are well or
ill.
Christian perfection is not, and never
can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a
relationship to God which shows itself amid the irrelevancies of human life.
When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that strikes you is the
irrelevancy of the things you have to do, and the next thing that strikes you
is the fact that other people seem to be living perfectly consistent lives.
Such lives are apt to leave you with the idea that God is unnecessary, by human
effort and devotion we can reach the standard God wants. In a fallen world this
can never be done. I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my
life produces a longing after God in other lives, not admiration for myself.
Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God is not after perfecting
me to be a specimen in His show-room; He is getting me to the place where He
can use me. Let Him do what He likes.
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment